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Errol Morris- First Person

Lately I've gotten hooked on a TV series that came out a few years ago called First Person. It was made by Errol Morris, a guy who calls himself a "non-fiction" (as opposed to documentary) filmmaker who's best known for films like The Fog of War and A Brief History of Time and commercials like the Apple ad from a few years ago with the "stoned" girl (see above) as well as famously winning a bet against Werner Herzog that resulted in Herzog eating his own shoe. First Person was a series that originally aired on Bravo and later on IFC where Morris interviewed strange and interesting people using a modified teleprompter he calls the Interrotron that hides the camera and makes the interview seem like the person is talking directly to the viewer.

So why am I writing about this show on a site called Bloody Good Horror? Well, besides the fact that this is a frickin' awesome show that pretty much everybody should check out, some of these episodes are among the creepiest stuff I've ever seen on TV. One is about a woman whose high school sweetheart turned out to be a serial killer. After he was arrested she wrote a book about him, fell in love with him and got engaged only to dump him for yet another serial killer she met while coming to visit him in prison. There's another about a cryonics activist who cut off his mother's head and froze it and to this day has it hidden from the authorities who can't prosecute him without it. There's also a disgruntled postman, a parrot who witnessed a murder, a woman who cleans up crime scenes, a giant squid expert, a museum of medical oddities and more.

Watching the show is kind of like going into a seedy bar where everybody looks normal but after you start up a conversation you soon realize all the people there are either really fascinating or completely bizarre. The added bonus of the show is that if they turn out to be a weirdo you don't have to make up an excuse to get away from them.

John Shelton

Writer/Podcast Host/Professor

Born and raised in the back of a video store, Shelton went beyond the hills and crossed the seven seas as BGH's foreign correspondent before settling into a tenure hosting Sophisticult Cinema. He enjoys the finer things in life, including but not limited to breakfast tacos, vintage paperbacks and retired racing greyhounds.